Study on Chinese Traditional Theory of Artistic Style

The book features an in-depth analysis of pre-modern Chinese discourses on artistic style especially the concept of Vitality-Charm (氣韻). Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book examines Vitality-Charm and related topics from the perspectives of aesthetics, stylistics, semiotics, cosmology, art history, and socio-cultural history. It reviews the development of, and examines the relations between, the concepts of poetic vision, spiritual resonance, spiritual expressiveness, Vitality-Charm and so on in the tradition of Chinese art (including literature, music, dancing, and drama). The book also attempts to clarify confusions caused by the overlapping and indistinct demarcations between the concepts when they are used in the discourse of, and even the training of art — especially traditional Chinese art.

Contents:

• The Philosophical Basis of the Theory of Vitality–Charm
• The Development and Substantiation of the Vitality–Charm Theory in History
• Connotation of the Category of Vitality–Charm
• Mediation of Relevant Disputes in History
• Vitality–Charm and Similar Categories: A Comparison
• The Artistic Form Taken by Vitality–Charm
• Vitality–Charm and the Development of Art
• The Vitality–Charm Theory and the Theory of Art in the World
• Theory of the Vitality–Charm: The Significance of Its Development to the World

Readership: Academics, policy-makers, professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, interested in Chinese philosophy and culture.
Key Features:

• First monograph to trace the conceptual binary of Vitality-Charm 氣韻 in traditional discourse of art to the fundamental antithesis between Qian 乾 and Kun 坤 in the Zhou Yi (Book of Changes) and to the Chinese culture
• Promotes and deepens the mutual understanding between art and philosophy, science and religion, ethics and cosmology, and the Eastern and Western cultures
• Constructs a cyclic model for the development of art, based on original cosmological and philosophical views